It’s been almost 20 years since the city of Worcester adopted a so-called “pay as you throw” trash collection system, which charges residents based on the amount of garbage they toss, and allows them to recycle free of charge. And city officials appear pretty happy with the results.
In a recent interview with the industry magazine Waste Age (perhaps your issue got lost in the mail?), Tim Murray, mayor of the Worcester at the time the program was adopted (and now Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor), called the program “a great success for Worcester, both fiscally and environmentally,” and said the city saved $1.2 million a year in waste management costs after adopting the program in 1993, and boosted its recycling rate from 3 to 36 percent.
Would that kind of program work here in Springfield, where the cost of trash collection has been a contentious political issue for years? City Councilor Tim Rooke thinks so—although, unlike in Worcester, City Hall is not exactly embracing the idea.
Rooke backs a plan submitted to the city by Waste Zero, a South Carolina-based company that works with municipalities across the country. He likes the proposal, he told the Advocate, because it would increase recycling and reduce the city’s trash costs—savings that could be passed back to residents. “You’re reducing the trash fee, the residents get rewarded for making it successful, you reduce the recycling tonnage … and you reduce your tipping fee,” Rooke said.
A recent analysis by city Budget Director LeeAnn Pasquini found the program would cost the city just under $9 million a year—$486,000 less than the new “graduated bin” trash system supported by Mayor Domenic Sarno. Nonetheless, Lee Erdman, the city’s chief administrative and financial officer, and Al Chwalek, head of the DPW, support the mayor’s plan.
Under the graduated-bin system, residents’ trash fees would range from $40 to $100 a year, depending on the size of the bin they use. Right now, residents pay $75 a year for one, standardized 95-gallon bin; the proposed program would allow people to select a barrel size—95, 65 or 35 gallons—that best fits their household’s needs. That plan has gotten mixed reviews from councilors, a number of whom questioned whether it would lead to more illegal dumping in the city.
Under the pay-as-you-throw plan, residents would use designated trash bags, sold in local stores and available in several sizes. Those bags seem to be a particular sticking point for some councilors, who say their constituents don’t want to deal with the hassle. “Everyone that has called me about the trash fee is emphatic about the fact that they do not want the bags,” at-large Councilor Kateri Walsh recently told the Springfield Republican. “I want to stay with the system people are comfortable with.”
According to Worcester officials, that kind of initial resistance can be overcome. In a 2008 article in the Worcester Telegram, Robert Fiore, that city’s assistant to the commissioner of public works and parks, said that when his city began the program, the biggest challenge was educating the public about how the program would work. But the results have been “remarkable,” he said.
“The first week, every house had a bag out and every house had a recycling bin out,” Fiore told the Telegram. “As people realize how much of what they were throwing away before can be recycled, all the fears about it being burdensome and costly and people throwing trash into the streets, all goes away.”
(One misconception, Rooke said, is that residents would simply leave the plastic bags at the curb for pickup. But according to Waste Zero, he said, the bags can be placed in the city-issued trash barrels already in use.)
Last week, the City Council was scheduled to vote on a proposal to extend the city’s existing trash fee. That proposal would keep the regular rate at $75, but lower slightly the reduced rate offered to qualifying senior citizens, veterans and low-income households, from the current $56.25 to a flat $50. That vote was delayed after Rooke invoked Rule 20, which allows a councilor to put off a vote until the city comptroller produces a report on its fiscal effects.
This Friday, April 15, councilors will have a chance to hash out the Waste Zero proposal once again, at a joint meeting of the finance and maintenance and development committees. The meeting is scheduled for noon at City Hall.
